Nathan Newman

Hope for a Mushroom Cloud

We Should Welcome End of the Filibuster

Eliminating the filibuster of Democrats against judicial
nominations has been deemed the "nuclear option" by GOP leaders.
Here's hoping for an atomic meltdown.

There is something inherently repellent about progressives rising
to the defense of the filibuster, the tool of racists and
segregationists for a century. But even at the pragmatic level, the
short-term fear of bad GOP judicial nominations ignores the
longer-term losses progressives have suffered from the existence of
the filibuster, which some conservative groups opposing the end of
the filibuster understand.

Conservatives Against the Filibuster

A coalition of conservative groups, including the anti-union
National Right to Work Committee, the Gun Owners of America and the
anti-abortion National Pro-Life Alliance, have broken ranks to oppose
ending the filibuster. They emphasize that conservative groups have
relied on the filibuster to stop progressive legislation over the
years. "Please do not tamper with freedom-loving Americans' Senate
filibuster tool, which has served them well many times in the past,"
wrote Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee, in
an open letter to Senate Majority Leader Frist.

And conservatives are right to treasure the filibuster. Without
the threat of the filibuster, we would have passed national health
care in 1994 -- and a host of other progressive legislation over the
years.

The opposition of the anti-union Right to Work Committee is
instructive. Repeatedly since the 1960s, major labor law reform has
had majority support in both houses of Congress and a president
willing to sign a bill to protect labor rights, yet opponents were
able to block the bill from being passed into law.

Eliminating the filibuster -- and ending it for judicial
nominations will lead quickly to its end in other areas -- would of
course open things up to worse rightwing laws that liberals could
have blocked.

How Filibuster Hurts Progressives:

But the reality is that conservatives have thrived in a political
environment where they can block any positive use of government. By
frustrating progressive policy, it feeds the argument that
ineffective government does not deserve the taxes working families
pay. That was the explicit argument of conservatives who blocked
health care reform in 1994; they knew that national health care would
be so popular that it would lock in support for positive government
action for decades more.

The reverse doesn't work for liberals. Blocking conservative
action through filibusters has short-term gains, but it feeds the
long-term cynicism of voters that government cannot accomplish
anything. Which just adds to the meta-argument of conservatives of
the dysfunctionality of government and the superiority of leaving
decisions to the marketplace.

Look at the budget process, the one area of legislation which is
currently immune to filibusters. The 2001 tax cuts passed with a
filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, so the filibuster would have
done progressives little good. Tax cuts are the most popular part of
the GOP agenda -- the candy that greases the rest of their policies
-- so that is the least likely place for a filibuster to help
progressives.

Conversely, the only reason progressives were able to clean up the
deficits of the Reagan era was because the GOP could not filibuster
Clinton's 1993 tax increases (which not a single Republican voted
for). Those tax increases created a robust expansion of government
revenues during the 1990s, which would never have happened if a
filibuster had been allowed for budget bills. Tax cuts will always be
more popular than tax increases, so thank the stars that we don't
have a filibuster on the budget, or else we would have a continual
ratcheting down of federal revenue with little ability ever to raise
taxes in the face of grandstanding conservative filibusters.

The reality is that progressive policy is quite popular -- witness
Bush's embrace of creating a Medicare drug benefit and the abject
failure of his drive to privatize Social Security. Unfortunately, the
only way to achieve passage of that Medicare drug benefit was under a
Republican president, since the GOP would have filibustered any
attempt with the Democrats in charge -- as they did against Clinton's
health care plan in 1994.

So the filibuster allows conservatives to block any decent policy
proposed by progressive leaders, then when those conservatives are in
office, they pass watered down versions of policies they know are
inevitable, then take political credit for them.

The Filibuster and Unaccountable Government

This is the broader political problem of the filibuster, which is
that it creates continually divided and thus unaccountable
government. And unaccountable government is used by conservatives to
block policy under Democratic-dominated governments, grab credit for
half-ass measures when they are in office, then play faux populist
games to run against a government conservatives may ultimately
control.

Yes, the absence of the filibuster might allow the GOP to pass
some noxious laws that would have been filibustered by Democrats. But
if the GOP actually had a free hand to vote their whole agenda, their
coalition would blow up. In fact, the GOP leadership depends on the
filibuster and the courts to block their cultural agenda, a point
that Thomas Frank outlined in his book, What's the Matter with
Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, since
conservative leaders depend on manipulating a sense of cultural
powerlessness by supporters to keep them on the political
reservation.

The Terri Schiavo vote is a taste of what would happen if the GOP
had to vote its whole agenda, and couldn't depend on Democrats to
take the heat for filibustering the cultural extremism. With the Dems
stepping back, no one questioned that with this vote, the GOP had
full control of the agenda, yet the bill they crafted was
interventionist enough to outrage their moderate soccer mom base but
weak enough to leave the religious base with the feeling that they
were being used politically when Schiavo died.

Here's my bottom line view. I don't think conservatives have
majority support for their policies and in a fair and democratic
fight, progressives would win most policy fights and win elections.
The conservative coalition is cobbled together through rhetorical
manipulation that depends on undemocratic structures such as the
filibuster and the courts to obscure political accountability.

Abolish the filibuster and force the GOP to be accountable not
just for the political candy of tax cuts but for their whole agenda,
and we will see a blowup in the GOP coalition and a shift in power to
progressives. And when progressives regain the majority, they will
actually have the ability to advance serious social change, rather
than be blocked at every turn by GOP filibusters.

So here's hoping for the GOP to hit the nuclear button.

Nathan Newman is director of Agenda for Justice, an
organization dedicated to supporting policy campaigns by progressives
across the country. Email nathan@newman.org or see
www.nathannewman.org.